...what you're doing is assigning each file it's category name and carrying that forward right?...

I'm not really assigning anything. In your example each row from ID's corresponds to exactly one column in Attributes. So I used this to keep the code simple:

1.file.ext Square --> corresponds to column 2 in Attributes
2.file.ext Triangle --> corresponds to column 3 in Attributes
...
16.file.et Square --> corresponds to column 17 in Attributes

...Also, is $j an arbitrary variable, or is it special? And $i is a special variable right?...

There is nothing 'special' about $i and $j. They are just used to traverse the data array and multi dimensional attrs array. In this case I used $j to address each attribute set in attrs. I used $i to address each element in data and each individual attribute of data sub sets inside attrs

...I was hoping to shoehorn the attribute ID into the data structure in order to use it in an output at the end of this...

To get the ID in the data set, you can make these changes. I'm just adding it to the final result set with the key 'ID' in this case. (Line number followed by: < = remove and > = add):

18 < shift @attrs ;
35 > $subres{ID} = $attrs->[0] ;
36 < for( my $i = 0 ; $i < @{$attrs->[$j]} ; ++$i ) {
36 > for( my $i = 1 ; $i < @{$attrs->[$j]} ; ++$i ) {
38 < ++$subres{ $data->[$i]}  ;  
38 > ++$subres{ $data->[$i-1]}  ;
[download]

On line 18 the row ID was removed from the attribute set. So we no longer do that. That means that in the for loop we need to start at index 1 instead of 0 (Line 36). However, the indexing in data has not changed so we have to subtract 1 $i-1 (Line 38).

...If I get rid of the first line in the second file, I'll lose the file name associated with the binary...

I'm not sure what you mean with this association. If it is the order of appearance inside data that changes? Then I suggest a small piece of code that alters that order based on column order inside Attributes

...Which would make them not be able to be grouped by category?...

What needs to be grouped? Do you have examples?

...And it's probably also important to point out that the attribute numbers aren't arbitrary, they are defined....

What do you mean with defined? In you example you show attributes that are binary, they are either 0 or 1? If there is something specific that needs to be done can you try to visualize that?

I am getting the following field in the dumper " 'ID' => $VAR1->[0]{'ID'}," added to the top of the output list for each attribute

$VAR1 = [
          {
            'ID' => [
                      '1',
                      1,
                      0,
                      1,
                      1,
                      0,
                      1,
                      1,
                      1,
                      1,
                      1,
                      0,
                      0,
                      1,
                      1,
                      1,
                      1
                    ],
            'Circle' => 4,
            'Triangle' => 0,
            'Rectangle' => 4,
            'Square' => 4
          },
          {
            'ID' => $VAR1->[0]{'ID'},
            'Circle' => 4,
            'Triangle' => 0,
            'Rectangle' => 0,
            'Square' => 4
          },
[download]

I am using the following script:

use strict ;
use warnings ;
use Data::Dumper ;

open my $dataIn1, "<", "Attributes_ID.txt" or die "NO ID FILE: $!";
open my $dataIn2, "<", "Attributes.txt" or die "NO ATTR FILE: $!";

my $data = () ;
my $attrs = () ;

sub getdata {
    my ( $fileName, $type ) = split /\t/, $_[1] ;
    push @{$data}, $type unless !defined $fileName ;
}

sub getattrs {
    my @attrs = split /\t/, $_[1] ;
    #shift @attrs ;
    push @{$attrs}, \@attrs unless !defined $attrs[0] ;
}

while( <$dataIn1> ) {
    chomp ;
    getdata( 0, $_ ) ;
}

while( <$dataIn2> ) {
    chomp ;
    getattrs( 0, $_ ) ;
}

my @result;
for( my $j = 0 ; $j < @{$attrs} ; ++$j ) {
    my %subres ;
    @subres{@{$data}} = ( 0 ) x @{$attrs->[0]} ;
    $subres{ID} = $attrs->[0] ;
    for( my $i = 1 ; $i < @{$attrs->[$j]} ; ++$i ) {
        if ( $attrs->[$j][$i] == 1 ) {
            ++$subres{ $data->[$i-1]}  ; 
        }
    } ;
    push @result, \%subres ;
}
print Dumper(\@result) ;
[download]

I'll continue looking at that to see if I can see why it isn't carrying the attribute ID forward. But I wanted to ask some more questions, and answer yours!

Within the code you have written, is it possible to move the attribute ID "outside" of the grouped data? As in:

 {5}{
            'Circle' => 0,
            'Triangle' => 0,
            'Rectangle' => 0,
            'Square' => 0
          },
 {6}         {
            'Circle' => 0,
            'Triangle' => 0,
            'Rectangle' => 0,
            'Square' => 0
          },
 {7}         {
            'Circle' => 4,
            'Triangle' => 4,
            'Rectangle' => 0,
            'Square' => 4
          },
[download]

The above may answer your question about the attribute ID's being defined. The numbers in the left column of the attribute demo dataset (1-30) are identifiers for that attribute. They could be names, or serial numbers...etc. But they are how I identify that attribute so I can look at it later. At the end of this, I actually need a list of the attributes that pass a True/False statement based on a series of percentages.

This is where the grouping comes in. Your script groups the datasets by their category by shifting the category in place of the file name. Which works great, as I am not so concerned with carrying the file name forward. So the categories in this case are "Square" "Circle" Rectangle" "Triangle." What I would need to do then is look at each attribute...So for attribute 7 in the code block above. I would have a series of True/False statements that asked for each category: "Does this attribute occur in Circle more than 50% of the time, and less than 10% of the time in Triangle, Rectangle, and Square?" Then I would have another statement asking the same question about that attribute for the next category. "Does this attribute occur in Square more than 50% of the time, and less than 10% of the time in Triangle, Rectangle, and Circle?" And so on and so forth for each unique category identified in the Attributes_ID file.

At the end of that, I would generate a list of attributes that scored "True" for each category.

Which brings me to my two questions.
1) Would it be better to "melt" this data? Create a four column data structure that consists of 1)File Name 2)Category Name, 3)Attribute ID, 4)Binary Value.

FILE            CATEGORY   ATTRIB   SCORE
1.file.ext    Square     1        1
2.file.ext    Triangle   1        0
3.file.ext    Circle     1        1
4.file.ext    Square     1        1
5.file.ext    Triangle   1        0
etc...
[download]

Or, 2) Would it be better to do this one line at a time with the True/False qualifiers built into the loop? As in, read in the first attribute row, with the categories, and evaluate the attribute for each category and store that True/False for that quartet in each category before moving to the next attribute? (It would be good to note that the categories change, but are defined in the attribute_ID file. SO it would be based on unique entries there.)

Down the rabbit hole!

Hi Speed_Freak,

This line was not correct, sorry for that: $subres{ID} = $attrs->[0] ; and should have been $subres{ID} = $attrs->[$j][0] ;. But it doesn't matter so much because that line is changed again in the next code.

I will give you some suggestions commented in the code how to require the results you described, but you'll have do some programming there yourself:

use strict ;
use warnings ;
use Data::Dumper ;

open my $dataIn1, "<", "Attributes_ID.txt" or die "NO ID FILE: $!" ;
open my $dataIn2, "<", "Attributes.txt" or die "NO ATTR FILE: $!" ;

my $data = () ;
my $attrs = () ;

sub getdata {
    my ( $fileName, $type ) = split /\t/, $_[0] ;
    push @{$data}, $type unless !defined $fileName ;
}

sub getattrs {
    my @attrs = split /\t/, $_[0] ;
    push @{$attrs}, \@attrs unless !defined $attrs[0] ;
}

sub calcPercentages {
    # INPUT: Hash reference
    # Determine the total amount of attributes
    # Walk through each category: Circle, Triangle, ...
    # Take the hit count divided by the total amount of attributes (mu
+ltiplied by 100?)
    # For each category add something to the hash to store the percent
+age
    #    e.g. CircleChance, TriangleChance, ....

    # askQuestions could potentially be called here
}

sub askQuestions {
    # INPUT: Hash reference
    # my $h = ...
    # Question 1: Does this attribute occur in Circle more than 50% of
+ the time, and less than 10% of the time in Triangle
    # if ( $h->{ CircleChance } > 50 && $h->{ TriangleChance } < 10 ) 
+{
    #    Do something here.
    #    E.g. Store another result $h
    # }
}

while( <$dataIn1> ) {
    chomp ;
    getdata( $_ ) ;
}

while( <$dataIn2> ) {
    chomp ;
    getattrs( $_ ) ;
}

my @result;
for( my $j = 0 ; $j < @{$attrs} ; ++$j ) {
    my %subres ;
    my $id = $attrs->[$j][0] ;
    @subres{@{$data}} = ( 0 ) x @{$attrs->[0]} ;
    for( my $i = 1 ; $i < @{$attrs->[$j]} ; ++$i ) {
        if ( $attrs->[$j][$i] == 1 ) {
            ++$subres{ $data->[$i-1]}  ; 
        }
    } ;
    # You could potentially start calculating hit count percentages pe
+r category here:
    calcPercentages( \%subres ) ;
    push @result, { $id => \%subres } ;
}
print Dumper(\@result) ;
[download]

The results now look like this, but more work is needed to calculate the hit count percentages (as indicated in the code above):

$VAR1 = [
          {
            '1' => {
                     'Circle' => 4,
                     'Rectangle' => 4,
                     'Square' => 4,
                     'Triangle' => 0
                   }
          },
          {
            '2' => {
                     'Circle' => 4,
                     'Square' => 4,
                     'Rectangle' => 0,
                     'Triangle' => 0
                   }
          },
        ];
[download]